Search form

Ringside

Icon Sportswire via AP Images Wisconsin Badgers forward Frank Kaminsky (44) puts up a shot during the Div I Men's Championship - Third Round - Wisconsin Badgers v Oregon Ducks at the Centurylink Center in Omaha, Nebraska. Wisconsin defeated Oregon 72-65 (Icon Sportswire via AP Images) This article originally appeared at Yes! magazine . D id you fill out your office bracket for this year’s NCAA basketball tournament? I did. Although, for a couple reasons, I don’t feel great about it. For one, I don’t know who’s going to win just about any game, so my chances of winning the pool are basically zero. And two, the event has lost most of its luster as the economic inequities of college sports have become exposed. March Madness is now a bigger cash cow than the Super Bowl, but it’s also college league, which means the only people not getting a piece of the billion-dollar pie are the players. There’s a word for that: exploitation. The entire economic foundation of college sports is built on...

Marriage is all over the headlines these days. First, an anniversary: Earlier this week, Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd celebrated ten years of legal marriage . In May 2004, after a years-long legal battle, they were the first and only people in line at City Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ready to to receive a marriage license. At the time, they were worried that a protester would shoot them. Now, gay marriage is legal in 19 states, including the entire Northeast. Court rulings in favor of same-sex marriage have been coming fast and furious. The latest state to jump on the gay-marriage bandwagon is Pennsylvania; on Tuesday, a judge once endorsed by Rick Santorum struck down the state's ban on same-sex unions . On Monday, another federal judge ruled Oregon's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional . The landscape has changed so quickly that some commentators are wondering whether the movement is "unstoppable." Americans are more and more likely to favor legalizing gay marriage: A...

Politics may not be for the faint of heart, but it's often for the deluded of mind. Today's meme is about those who are deluding either themselves or others, and will inevitably have their hopes dashed by cruel reality. We start with Karl Rove, who went on Fox News Sunday and said that despite all that talk about Hillary Clinton and traumatic brain injuries, "Look, I'm not questioning her health." Sure, OK. Louisiana governor and future presidential candidate Bobby Jindal penned an op-ed for foxnews.com arguing that the Affordable Care Act can still be repealed , despite what "those in the elite salons of Washington" may think. All you need is "political will," and maybe another 50 repeal votes in the House. That ought to do it. San Antonio mayor Julian Castro is going to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and a lot of people see that as a stepping stone to a vice-presidential bid in 2016. Phillip Bump says : keep dreaming. Almost 60,000 people have signed a petition...

No subject tends to confound political pundits—or national Democrats and liberals in general—quite like Southern politics. And if you don't believe it, take a gander at the oft-cited 2006 manual for Democratic Dixie-bashing , Tom Schaller's Whistling Past Dixie, which bizarrely recommended that the party abandon the nation's largest and fastest-growing region (not to mention its largest African-American population) and just let the GOP have it. Fortunately, President Obama ignored that sage advice and won three electoral-vote-rich Southern states in 2008. But old habits of stereotyping the South as incurably right-wing die hard—if they die at all. This year, liberal pundits fretting about losing the Democrats' majority in the U.S. Senate were asking the same old questions: How could the Democrats possibly hope to hold onto their Senate seats in such snake-handling, Confederate flag-waving, gay-bashing, Obamacare-hating backwaters as Louisiana, Arkansas and North Carolina? As yet...

Yesterday, the Tea Party had its first big win of the season. Ben Sasse, who rallied with Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin while vying for the Republican Senate nomination in Nebraska, carried away a comfortable victory against two other contenders. Ted Cruz took to Facebook to express his delight. "Ben Sasse's decisive victory in Nebraska tonight is a clear indication that the grassroots are rising up to make D.C. listen," he wrote. "They're rising up to take our country back." But it seems that Sasse, the former president of Midlands University, may not be the kind of Tea Party candidate we're used to. Bickering with Mitch McConnell — the Senate minority leader generally considered to be the linchpin of the Republican establishment — is Sasse's best far-right credential. Otherwise, he looks shockingly mainstream. After all, what kind of Tea Party candidate served as an advisor to the former Health and Human Services secretary during the early implementation of the Affordable Care Act?...

In a move reminiscent of the Terry Schiavo episode—in which Senator Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican, assumed the power to diagnose people via television —right-wing strategist Karl Rove is spending his time on the speaker circuit telling people Hillary Clinton might have brain damage. Why, pray tell? After suffering from a blood clot in 2012 that delayed her congressional testimony about Benghazi, Clinton came back "after 30 days in the hospital ... wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury." "We need to know what’s up with that," Rove said at a conference last week. ( The New York Post reported his comments today.) Except it was three days later . And as far as anyone knows, there are no special glasses for people who've had a brain injury. Is this Rove, cartoon supervillain, at work? Former George W. Bush Communications Director Nicolle Wallace, who worked with Rove in the White House, says it was "a deliberate strategy on his part to raise [...

Pity the poor Koch brothers. All Charles and David want to do is make America safe for good, old-fashioned, Wild West capitalism. But somehow, they seem to be teeing everybody off—left and right. Plus, it's so doggone pricey to buy control of the federal government these days! The K-Bros dished out $400 million to defeat President Obama in 2012, all for naught. According to an Americans for Prosperity memo that fell into the hands of Politico , they learned a startling lesson from the effort: “If the presidential election told us anything, it’s that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak." Who knew!?! So now, as they prepare to spend $125 million to buy Congress this year, the memo says the Kochs are softening their message so people don't get the wrong idea : "We consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy—and its advocates—benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of...

Online editors and traffic-watchers across the country jumped for joy today when Vanity Fair published a teaser of Monica Lewinsky's tell-all piece in its latest issue, due out later this week. Here's the money quote: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.” Now, let the scandal-reminiscing and chattering begin! The timing—just as Hillary Clinton toys with another presidential run—is uncanny, writes Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. Maybe, says CNN's Ashley Banfield, but this isn't the first time Hillary has run for president. At least Republicans may finally have something to obsess about besides the faux Benghazi scandal . (Already, Rand Paul is galavanting around the TV circuit saying the Clinton affair shows that Democrats are the ones with the real war on women.) Is this Lewinsky's last-ditch...

The political ground on the Affordable Care Act seems to be shifting—perhaps enough to help Democrats in the fall, perhaps not. But as more and more information about the law's operation comes in, Republicans are having a harder time arguing that all those people getting insurance is a terrible thing. Yesterday, we learned that health care spending spiked in the first quarter of 2014. Even before Republicans could open their mouths, Jonathan Chait (among other people) informed them that this was exactly what everyone knew would happen . Because when you give millions of people coverage, they go to the doctor. Simon Malloy of Salon notes that "we seem to be past the era of the viral Obamacare victim story." And after that, what can Republican candidates say? Because weirdly, "It turns out that Americans really, really like having access to affordable healthcare, and when they finally get it, they use it." So Republicans are trying a new tack. They've released a report claiming that...

Contemplating how best to celebrate the birthday of the late, great Edward Kennedy Ellington, one of the finest composers and orchestra leaders who ever lived, one might not have considered the banning for life of a racist team-owner from attending the games of his own team, but that’s not a bad way to fête the Duke. But that’s just what happened to Donald Sterling, franchise owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers--that, and a $2.5 million fine , which is pretty much chicken feed to a guy who apparently gave his alleged mistress two Bentleys and a Ferrari . However, reports the Los Angeles Times , Sterling, for the time being, will get to keep ownership of the team, unless other NBA team owners find a way to force him to sell. This all stems, of course, from reports of a recorded telephone conversation that has a man alleged to be Sterling telling a female friend not to bring black people to his team’s games, despite the fact the the team comprises mostly...

Try to relax; today's meme is all about discomfort. And there's no one feeling more of it than Republicans, who were hit yesterday with the rhetorical stylings of their erstwhile hero Cliven Bundy—Nevada rancher, defier of laws, and racial philosopher. The Republican Party's chief spokesperson, for instance, can't figure out why anyone would associate Bundy with the GOP . "The issue with Cliven Bundy has absolutely nothing to do with his party, zero," he said. After all, it's not like the GOP's chief organ in the media had been giving the guy blanket coverage all the while Republican politicians were praising his crusade. I mean, c'mon. Republicans are also being made uncomfortable by their own candidates, who haven't all gotten the message on the "outreach" the party is supposed to be doing. Here's one who has proposed an effort to round up and deport every undocumented immigrant in the country , which he calls, no kidding, "Operation Wetback." Here's one who said it was an "...

It's media discovery day here at the Daily Meme. What's being discovered? The story of the day is of course Nevada rancher and public property thief Cliven Bundy, who, to the surprise of pretty much nobody, turns out to be a stone-cold racist. When a guy holding a press conference starts a sentence with, "I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," the clever reporter starts writing. And so does a right-wing hero fall from his perch. Bundy will now disappear from Fox News, where he was getting round-the-clock coverage. Bundy's greatest media advocate has been Sean Hannity, who has gotten into an ugly/funny back-and-forth with Jon Stewart over the issue . We assume that with this latest development, Hannity will apologize for ever promoting Bundy, and apologize sincerely to Stewart. And that Stewart will not gloat about it at all. As Jamelle Bouie notes, Bundy's ideas aren't really all that unfamiliar : "In short, the only difference between Bundy and a whole host of...

"A blinkered view of race in America won out in the Supreme Court on Tuesday when six justices agreed, for various reasons, to allow Michigan voters to ban race-conscious admissions policies in higher education ... " So starts the New York Times 's righteous take-down of today's Supreme Court ruling in Schuette v. BAMN , in which the Justices upheld a Michigan law banning the consideration of race in admissions. The plurality's justification—six Justices in total agreed with the ruling, but differed in their reasons for doing so—for reversing the lower-court decision? As long as the voters want it, they get it . But the real news has been Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent, which the New York Times 's Adam Liptak called "the most passionate and most significant of her career." It is the first time Sotomayor—whose nomination conservatives bitterly opposed—has spoken up about race. "In my colleagues' view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination...

We're all about voting and elections today, starting with t his Fox News poll showing a wide-open race for the 2016 GOP nomination. Chris Christie leads with 15 percent, followed by Jeb Bush and Rand Paul with 14 percent each, going all the way down to Bobby Jindal with room to move at 2 percent. Looks like it's time for some traffic problems in Des Moines. New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill bringing the Empire State into the National Popular Vote Compact, which could effectively eliminate the electoral college if enough states join in. Rick Hertzberg explains, in case you need to be brought up to speed . The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging Arkansas' voter ID law . One of the lead plaintiffs is a 78-year-old man who has no birth certificate, and Republicans in the state argue that he suffers from no undue burden in voting. After all, he'll be allowed to vote if he can successfully recite Ronald Reagan's 1984 convention speech backward in Esperanto while performing a one-...

Let's just say that this has not been Kathleen Sebelius's year. As secretary of Health and Human Services, she absorbed much of the blame for the botched rollout of the Obamacare website. Even after the White House exceeded its health insurance signup goal--the chance for a victory lap if there ever was one-- Sebelius announced last week that she was stepping down . Republicans could barely conceal their glee upon hearing that their arch-nemesis was departing. Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked her Twitter followers whether they'd be breaking out "red solo cups" or "crystal stemware" to celebrate Sebelius's resignation. Ted Cruz speculated that the Democrats pushed out Sebelius because Senate Democrats were "scared." Everyone had something to say about Sebelius's legacy. Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings generously declared that Sebelius would be a "footnote in history." (We should all be so lucky.) Now, Sebelius is on an apology tour. In an interview with Meet the Press on Sunday...